Thursday, December 31, 2015

Egypt: Labor Unrest from North to South

As 2015 draws to a close, worker protests are building momentum across the country

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Jano Charbel

Thousands of workers across the country are
protesting against what they call unjust employment practices, and an associated spate of
industrial actions has picked up steam in recent weeks.

Protests
have been concentrated at the Suez Canal Authority, at hotels and
resorts in the Red Sea town of Sharm el-Sheikh, the Shebin al-Kom
Textiles Company in Monufiya, across several governorates in the branches of the state-owned Petrotrade Company, and a fertilizer company in the Upper Egyptian City of
Assiut.

In Suez, 2,000 workers employed by companies affiliated
with the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) have been holding sit-in protests
and partial strikes for close to two weeks.

Labor protests have been ongoing since December 8
at six out of the seven subsidiary companies that are administratively —
but not financially — managed by the SCA. These subsidiary maritime
companies offer the SCA services including maintenance, transport,
roping and docking.

Workers have staged partial strikes and
sit-ins to protest low wages and insufficient bonuses, demanding parity
with employees directly employed by the SCA.

“There are clear
discrepancies between working conditions and incomes at the SCA and
those of the seven affiliated companies,” argues Seoud Omar, a fulltime
SCA employee living in Suez City. “There are even discrepancies among
these seven companies — some generate profits, while others incur
losses. This translates into several different pay-scales for employees
along the Suez Canal.”

Omar says he stands in solidarity with
workers protesting in Suez and the rest of the nation, but “parity
remains a difficult goal to realize for all these workers in these
different companies.”

SCA officials are currently in negotiations
with the strikers and protesting workers in the hopes of reaching a
settlement. Trade union organizer Galal al-Gizawy, who works for the
Canal Port Company in Ismailia City, hopes the negotiations will take
into consideration the concerns and demands of the subsidiary company
employees, such as a unified pay-scale.

“We are seeking to suspend
the strikes and protests,” he explains, "but we are also demanding
complete parity with our fellow employees at the SCA.”

Senior
employees at the subsidiary companies can earn up to LE3,000 a month,
Gizawy says, but a worker doing the same job at the same level for the
SCA can earn up to LE15,000, and “that’s not to mention the regular
bonuses, housing compensation, medical care, and access to sporting
clubs and other benefits granted to fulltime SCA employees," says
Gizawy.

Workers in Sharm el-Sheikh have also been protesting, but
their complaints are different — they’re fighting against mass layoffs
at hotels and resorts as the tourism infrastructure there massively
retracts.

Tourism in the coastal city was hard-hit after a Russian
Metrojet airplane crashed in the Sinai Peninsula on October 31 shortly
after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh Airport.

Tourism
workers are reportedly now filing complaints with the Manpower Ministry
claiming they were fired illegally. Hotel managers have allegedly
claimed their hotels needed to undergo renovation as a pretext to lay
off the workers, and shut down several wings of their establishments,
while other hotels have closed altogether. Many of those that remain
open are on the verge of bankruptcy.

Workers in
Qalyubia are also unhappy. Since Tuesday, dozens workers have been
protesting over their unpaid wages in front of the gates of
public-sector Egyptian Dredging Company located in the town of Abu
Zaabal, the privately owned news site Al-Bawaba reported. They say they haven’t been paid in two months.

And
at the Shebin al-Kom Textiles Company in Monufiya, the entire workforce
of 1,500 people has been on strike for four days to demand the payment
of overdue bonuses, better wages and management changes. In addition, a
group of former Shebin al-Kom Textile workers who say they were
punitively fired or pushed into early retirement have been conducting
their own protests for over a week to demand their jobs back.

Workers
were galvanized to escalate their protest actions into a full-scale
strike when the company’s security guards allegedly physically assaulted
and injured several protesting workers last Saturday, the privately
owned Al-Watan newspaper and Veto news site reported.

“Everyday
for the past eight days, we have been protesting, rallying and
demanding reinstatement in our company,” says Shimy. “Despite a court order for our reinstatement in 2011, we have not received any notifications or any proposals for our reinstatement.”

In
addition, “we are demanding accountability for the administrative
board,” says fired worker Ragab al-Shimy, “as well as the necessary
investments to return our company to its original productive capacity,
as opposed to the nearly 50 percent capacity at which it is now
working.”

Previously a public-sector company, the Shebin al-Kom
Textile Company was privatized almost 10 years ago when it was sold to
the Indonesian-based Indorama Textiles Company. After workers filed
lawsuits claiming the company was sold at below-market value, the
Indonesian investors began divesting and firing workers en masse. The
company's production dramatically deteriorated under these conditions.

In
2011, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that the company was sold
for less than its real value and ordered that it return to the
management of the state-owned Holding Company for Textile Industries.
The court also ordered the new managers to reinstate workers who had
been fired or pushed into early retirement under the Indonesian owners.

In
Alexandria, Upper Egypt, and several other governorates, some 12,000 workers employed by the state-owned petroleum services
company Petrotrade have been on strike for the past 10 days as they
demand their profit shares, which they say have only been distributed to
top administrative board members, the privately owned Al-Tahrir news site reported.

The
striking workers are based in 56 centers and offices across the
governorate, Al-Shorouk reported. They have allegedly declined the
company’s offer to implement a new profit-sharing agreement by March 15
if they suspend their strike.

Workers have held several strikes
and protests at Petrotrade’s different branches nationwide over the past
five years, but the majority have been in Cairo. The wave of worker
dissatisfaction only recently spread to the Alexandria branches.

In
Upper Egypt, workers reportedly occupied the Assiut Fertilizer Company
factory on Wednesday to protest the administrative board’s decision to
dock 25 percent of their wages. These deductions came just days after
administrators established a new educational evaluation and placement
system, according to Al-Watan.

Meanwhile,
doctors working at hospitals belonging to the state-owned Health
Insurance Authority have been protesting since early last week to demand
parity with their colleagues employed by Health Ministry hospitals,
which would include improved wages, benefits and working conditions.

The
Doctors Syndicate planned a protest outside their downtown Cairo
headquarters on Saturday to show solidarity with the protesting doctors,
reported the state-owned Al-Ahram. The physicians are reportedly planning to escalate their protest actions if their demands are not met.

A
list of these demands was sent to the Health Insurance Authority as
well as the Cabinet, and the official responses — or lack thereof — will
likely determine the doctors’ future course of action.